Table of Contents

Workflow

This script will facilitate adopting a subset of the branch-featuring workflow characterised by:

  • each feature will have its own branch
  • feature branches derive directly form master
  • integration of master to feature branch happens via rebasing
  • force pushing of feature branches to origin is not an issue
  • release branches are created aggregating multiple branches

Scope

The scope of this gem is helping out in the following cases:

  • you have multiple feature branches waiting for release due to some reason (i.e. long QA time...), and need to keep them aligned with master
  • you need to quickly aggregate branches for a release
  • you want to cleanup local and remote branches upon release

Installation

Just install the gem to use the binaries commands.

gem install git_commands

GIT

The library uses the Ruby command line execution to invoke the git command as a separate process.
I assume you have the GIT program on your path.

Usage

Here are the main commands:

Arguments

All of the available commands come with the same set of arguments:

Help

Display the help of a specific command by:

rebase --help
Usage: rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=feature/love_me_tender,fetaure/teddybear
    -r, --repo=REPO                  The path to the existing GIT repository
    -b, --branches=BRANCHES          Specify branches as: 1. a comma-separated list of names 2. the path to a file containing names on each line 3. via pattern matching
    -h, --help                       Prints this help

Repository

You have to specify the absolute path to the GIT repository you want to work with. The path must be a folder initialized as a valid GIT repository (a check via rev-parse is performed), otherwise an error is raised:

rebase --repo=invalid
'invalid' is not a valid GIT repository!

Branches

As with the repository you always have to specify the list of branches you want to work with. There are different options:

List of branches

Specify a comma separated list of branch names:

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=feature/love_me_tender,feature/teddybear,feature/return_to_sender

Loading branches file...
Successfully loaded 3 branches:
01. feature/love_me_tender
02. feature/teddybear
03. feature/return_to_sender
Path to a names file

Specify an absolute path to a file containing the branches names on each line:

File /Users/Elvis/greatest_hits/.branches:

feature/love_me_tender
feature/teddybear
feature/return_to_sender
feature/in_the_ghetto

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits/.branches

Loading branches file...
Successfully loaded 4 branches:
01. feature/love_me_tender
02. feature/teddybear
03. feature/return_to_sender
04. feature/in_the_ghetto
Pattern matching

In case you want to work with a set of branches with a common pattern, you have to specify a greedy operator with the wild card you want to match.
Just consider you have not to specify origin/ as the name of the branch, since is managed by the script for you: 

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=*der

Loading branches file...
Successfully loaded 2 branches:
01. feature/love_me_tender
02. feature/return_to_sender
Checking

Each loaded branch is validated for existence (but for branches loaded via pattern matching). In case the validation fails, the branch is filtered from the resulting list.

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=noent,feature/love_me_tender

Loading branches file...
Successfully loaded 1 branch:
01. feature/love_me_tender

In case no branches have been loaded, an error is raised:

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=noent1,noent2
No branches loaded!
Master branch

Master branch cannot be included into the branches list for obvious reasons (from useless to dangerous ones):

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=master,feature/love_me_tender

Loading branches file...
Successfully loaded 1 branch:
01. feature/love_me_tender

Commands

Here are the available GIT commands:

Rebase

This is probably the most useful command in case you have several branches to rebase with origin/master frequently. A confirmation is asked to before rebasing. 

rebase --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=feature/love_me_tender,feature/teddybear,feature/return_to_sender
...

Purge

This command remove the specified branches locally and remotely.
A confirmation is asked before removal. 

purge --repo=/temp/top_20 --branches=*obsolete*
...

Aggregate

This command aggregates all of the specified branches into a single one in case you want to create a release branch.
It uses the following naming convention: release/yyyy_mm_dd
A confirmation is asked before aggregating. 

aggregate --repo=/Users/Elvis/greatest_hits --branches=*ready*